You will recall that in the 1952 tuna re- 

 port (Anderson, Stolting, et al 1952) — 

 a study which the Bureau conducted at the 

 request of the Western Senators — a 

 projection was made of probable tuna con- 

 sumption, based on estimated population 

 increase and product popularity. Actually, 

 consumer acceptance exeeded even the 

 projected figures appearing in that report. 

 According to the Bureau of Census (Zitter 

 and Siegel, 1958), our population is ex- 

 pected to increase to 250 million by 1980. 

 If tuna consumption continues at the same 

 per capita rate and applying this against 

 the anticipated population increase, we 

 would have tuna requirements around 500 

 million pounds (figure 6). However, if 

 we were to project consumption at the 

 post World War II accelerated rate, and 

 taking into consideration the anticipated 

 population increase, we could get tuna 

 requirements running as heavy as those 

 shown on the upper line of figure 6. It 

 is redundant to state that there are many 

 variables which could have a very profound 

 effect on the direction these lines take. 



So far we have talked only about our 

 household consumer, but I think it would 

 be perfectly in order that we consider 

 another customer of the tuna industry — 

 the military. Out of the 9 million pounds 

 of canned fish purchased in 1958, canned 

 tuna totaled almost 6 million pounds. As 

 a matter of fact, from the period 1950 

 to 1958, the military subsistance centers 

 purchased almost 58 million pounds of 

 canned fish. Of this amount, tuna sales 

 amounted to slightly more than 25 million 

 pounds, or about U3 percent. 



THE PHILADELPHIA PROJECT 



rooo 



900 



too 



too 



HOW 

 MUCH 



MORE? 



Figure 5. 



1939 I94S I9SO 1955 '58 I960 1965 1970 1915 1990 



Figure 6. 



COMPETITIVE PRODUCTS 



Of vital importance to the producer, 

 distributor and the seller alike is an 

 up-to-date appreciation of trends in con- 

 sumer demand. This is particularly 

 important when we consider the rate of 

 consumption of related competitive items. 

 Directly competitive with tuna are the 

 other canned fish items in volume produc- 

 tion, and particularly canned salmon. In 

 that regard the use of canned tuna has 

 shown a very dramatic increase (figure 7) 

 whereas canned salmon, for a number of 

 reasons, has shown a decrease. 



Not only must tuna compete with other 

 fishery products, but also with other forms 

 of animal protein. Nutritionally, our 

 different animal proteins are merely inter- 

 changeable with respect to their contribu- 

 tion of amino acids, vitamins and minerals 

 to our diet. The competition then becomes 

 one of price, convenience, availability, 

 taste, appearance, or of motivation created 

 by promotion pressure . Studies of tfie 

 consumption of canned tuna as related to 

 beef, poultry, eggs and cheese, from 1930 

 to 1957, Bhow that the increase in per 

 capita consumption of beef was 28.2 pounds 

 during this period; poultry, lij.3 pounds; 

 eggs, 6.2 pounds; cheese, h.k pounds, and 

 tuna l.U pounds. The poultry and beef in- 

 creases represent carcass rates, and as 

 such should be reduced somewhat, but even 

 so, it is apparent that there has been a 

 tremendous increase. Encouragingly, the 

 increase in canned tuna is far greater than 

 for fishery products as a whole, which has 



90 



